MOSES LAKE - East Columbia Basin Irrigation District officials continue to reach out to landowners as they move forward with plans to implement the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Program.

The district held a meeting at Big Bend Community College recently to update landowners on their efforts to remedy the groundwater decline in the Odessa Subarea.

The Bureau of Reclamation issued a Record of Decision for the Odessa Subarea Special Study Environmental Impact Statement this past April - outlining a solution to remedy that decline.

According to a previous Columbia Basin Herald article, Reclamation's preferred solution will bring surface water to about 70,000 acres of land both north and south of Interstate 90 by enlarging the East Low Canal. Water would come from the Columbia River by way of Banks Lake.

The first part of implementing the solution, including the widening of the East Low Canal, is set to take place this fall, district secretary manager Craig Simpson said during the meeting.

According to Reclamation's Record of Decision, about 43 miles of the canal south of I-90 would need to be widened. In addition, a second barrel would need to be added to all five of the canal's existing siphons in order to prepare the canal to carry the additional water.

Construction on the canal is expected to begin in November, Simpson said.

However, implementing the solution also requires the district to develop and build a delivery system to get the surface water from the canal to farmlands.

This is where landowners come in, Simpson said. The district needs to know which landowners are interested in receiving the surface water and how much they would be willing to pay for the system before the system is designed and built, he said.

"We're going to continue to try and contact landowners because we have to be sure they don't want to be part of the project before we move on," he said. "Even if they're not sure and they don't know yet, we would still like to know if they're interested because if we don't know we won't spend the time to find a delivery system to get water out to them."

Levi Johnson, development coordinator for the district, said trying to contact landowners who may be eligible for and interested in the groundwater replacement program is not an easy task.

The district recently sent out a questionnaire to landowners to gauge interest in the program, but some landowners might not have received it, he said.

"We were working with outdated info, a lot of people did not receive the initial survey," Johnson said.

The survey was sent to 130 landowners. As of their recent meeting, only 52 percent of the surveys were returned, he said.

About 60,000 acres and 150 water certificates were represented in the responses, Johnson said. All of the responses indicated that the landowner was interested in the program, he said.

According to the responses, the average cost landowners would be willing to pay for the delivery system was $3,400 per acre per year, with a repayment term of 42 years.

"With that information we can start looking at alternative designs that deliver water to landowners interested and eligible," he said.

He urged landowners who hadn't turned in a survey to turn them in as soon as possible. Landowners who think they're eligible for the program should also contact the district, Johnson said.